If you ever wondered what happened to Happy Loman, he ended up pissing his pants before a big Samsonite meeting and getting kicked to the curb.

Joel Murray’s always worked in his older brothers’ shadows, but tonight he showed he has all of their skills at mixing comedy with pathos. Freddy Rumsen’s always been a joke around Sterling-Cooper, in both the show’s reality and ours. But Murray’s full range was in play tonight letting us see the most human person at SC.

Unlike Roger Sterling, fighting the war from his perch on a ship in command of men, Freddy got his hands dirty, felling over a dozen Germans. Roger respected that, but obviously couldn’t see how that burden led directly to Freddy ending the war in the signal corps and Freddy numbing himself with booze.

In response to Freddy, we get a clear look into the others around him:

• Peggy – always coolly practical but always compassionate – cleans up Freddy’s mess and puts it aside. As her benefactor, Peggy has a soft spot for Freddy, but her basic decency would have her act no differently to anyone else.
• Pete is Pete. Not even on the season premiere of Dexter was a more shallow affect and narcissistic personality on display. Only his innate cowardice and desire to appear normal keeps Pete from storing body parts in his freezer.
• The boys, in their jokes at Freddy’s expense, are boys.
• Don empathizes with Freddy as easily as he ignores Betty’s pain. He sees in Freddy a man brought down by his own moral failings and realizes the end game for him is likely no better. In a world where the Pete Campbells and Duck Phillips rule, a decent man with tragic flaws – and Don surely sees himself as such – stands no chance.

Marilyn’s untimely passing signals the darkness ahead. With all that fame and fortune, even Marilyn couldn’t find happiness and ended her search in the same way America was soon to realize the comfort and prosperity of the post-war years were merely window dressing, hiding scars and pain. Middle age was starting to hit the Greatest Generation and Freddy wasn’t the only one self-medicating to get through the day. And younger men and women weren’t fairing much better.

Don and Betty’s marriage is through. They might still lie to themselves and each other and patch things up, but Don’s relieved to be out of the house and moving on. After he brought the kids home from their outing and he spoke with Betty, a train whistle cried plaintively in the distance. The train calling to a hobo who’d settled down too long.

Betty’s still a mess, only able to clean herself up and go out once, to cut herself off from Sarah Beth. I have to admit I was tricked. I thought once again that Betty was playing the role of seductress and might actually not shrink away from it at the end. I didn’t anticipate her true desire was to be left in peace.

This broken marriage will just be another statistic by the decade’s end. Like Roger and Mona’s marriage and all those others pulling apart at the seams at SC.

The marital problems and emotional strife of the privileged few are not the only pressures coming. Not much longer will African Americans “just hide in plain sight.” Paralleling Peggy’s rise in the ranks, Roger informs Don that BBDO had hired a black copywriter. In a short while the elevator operators and maids will be marching and demanding their rights. In two years, “The Champ” won’t be Floyd Patterson smiling in an underground casino, and he won’t be the unpopular Sonny Liston. Cassius Clay will demolish Liston and become the most famous and most popular man in the world. Unlike Marilyn, Muhammad Ali will use his fame to speak truth to power.

What did everyone else think?

R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.